WSJ mangles history to argue government didn’t launch the Internet

Confuses Ethernet, Internet, and the Web—and even misunderstands blockquotes.

"It's an urban legend that the government launched the Internet," writes L. Gordon Crovitz in Monday's Wall Street Journal, launching into just one of a myriad of problems with his short opinion piece.

While he concedes that the military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program funded the creation of the ARPAnet, the first large-scale packet-switched network, he argues that the government doesn't deserve credit for the creation of the Internet:

If the government didn't invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet's backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks.

But full credit goes to the company where [Robert Taylor] worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.

Crovitz is right that Vinton Cerf, along with Bob Kahn, invented the TCP/IP protocol that is the foundation of the modern Internet. But he neglects to mention that Cerf's early work on the protocol was funded by the US military through its DARPA program.

"Hyperlinks" are not the Internet, and Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent them. Nor is the World Wide Web the Internet, although the Web has become such a popular Internet application that many people confuse the two. But more to the point, Berners-Lee was working at CERN, a research organization funded by European governments, when he invented the World Wide Web in the early 1990s.

Xerox is indeed a private company, and Xerox PARC researchers did develop some important computing technologies, including Ethernet and the graphical user interface. But it's not accurate to say that "the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks." Ethernet was designed primarily as a local networking technology to connect computers in a home or office. The point of the Internet's TCP/IP protocol was to allow networks using different standards, including Ethernet, to communicate with each other. Many of the networks that now comprise the Internet use the Ethernet protocol, but what makes the Internet the Internet is TCP/IP, not Ethernet.

Indeed, not only is Crovitz confused about the origins of the Internet, he also seems not to understand the conventions of the World Wide Web. He quotes George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen as saying that "The Internet, in fact, reaffirms the basic free market critique of large government." But that quote wasn't written by Cowen. It was quoted by Cowen in a 2005 blog post. The page Cowen was quoting has succumbed to bitrot, but the Internet Archive has a copy.

The Wall Street Journal has earned a reputation for producing in-depth and meticulously fact-checked news coverage. Unfortunately, it doesn't always apply that same high standard of quality to their editorial page.

"The Wall Street Journal has earned a reputation for producing in-depth and meticulously fact-checked news coverage. Unfortunately, it doesn't always apply that same high standard of quality to their editorial page."

The point still stands. The Internet was a collegiate backwater until it was privatized and commercialized, a step that many in academia and government resisted tooth and nail.

It would not be what it is today without massive investment by private industry.

Unfortunately, this sort of misinformation is growing as the US Presidential election really gears up, as certain parts of the Republican party continue to use "you don't need government help to be successful" as a major talking point.

Ignoring the interstate system, trade laws, air travel, rail travel, etc... and of course, misstating the origins of the internet.

I just want to comment that the perfect author was selected for this, based on his name...

And thank you for mentioning the fact that the internet and the web are NOT the same thing. Even among my techy friends (some of whom have PhDs in CS or EE) confuse them. Industry will talk about wanting students who know "web programming" and then make a comment along the lines of "they should at least know how the internet functions", and then act confused when I can know nothing of modern web programming but can provide a detailed analysis of how the internet functions.

Yeah, this editorial was a total joke.

Edit: And no one argues that the internet is where it is today because of government. The success of it as a platform is mostly due to private investment and industry groups. But that doesn't change its origin in the slightest...

"The Wall Street Journal has earned a reputation for producing in-depth and meticulously fact-checked news coverage. Unfortunately, it doesn't always apply that same high standard of quality to their editorial page."

The point still stands. The Internet was a collegiate backwater until it was privatized and commercialized, a step that many in academia and government resisted tooth and nail.

It would not be what it is today without massive investment by private industry.

You can't pick just one part of what was important and say "it would not be what it is today without this." Ok, yes, technically true, but it also would not be what it is today without DARPA funding, and it would not be what it is today without Cerf. It's a whole story with multiple parts, each step building on one that came before. To neglect one in order to elevate another is dishonest; to do so in order to support your personal ideology is a classic example of confirmation bias, and deserves to be called out.

After the 8.8 Maule earthquake, there wasn't any functional government in Chile, for 3 days. The streets were ravaged by bands of pillagers and bands of self-defense, both armed with what they ware able to get, to survive. Radio was working, some private companies were also working, but everything else was demolished, under water or pillaged. There wasn't any functional police. Until the Army took control and the state was reimplanted.

Without a government, THAT will happen to you. It's quite simple, and the fanaticism of WSJ won't do to change this conclusion.

The Alto deserves a place in PC history but it was not a consumer-grade PC nor did it drive the adoption of the GUI.

joshv wrote:

It would not be what it is today without massive investment by private industry.

Almost every major innovation that has revolutionized society is a result of public/private cooperation. The Internet today is a result of just that. However the article minimizes the fact that early development of the modern Internet was shouldered by US and European governments.

Ethernet was designed primarily as a local networking technology to connect computers in a home or office.

@ Author: If I understand correctly Ethernet was developed in the '70s and commercialized in 1980 (per Wiki). Now my questions are this: When you say "primarily" designed for a purpose, does this disclude the purpose the critiqued author mentions? Because if so to counter a statement with a "majority" use would seem, odd. But what caught my eye is your statement that, in the 70s, Ethernet was developed to connect home computers. Office I see (be it academic, government, or private) but I have a hard time believing, due to the miniscule install base in the 70s, that Ethernet was "designed primarily" for home and office use. "Home" seems like a completely corner case and not the primary purpose for the design development--it is a purpose that the design could accomodate AND later in the industries development found a nice home. That may be a nit pick but what do you expect from an article whose purpose is to complain about the accuracy of another author? In fact it seems to be the exact sort of error the article itself is complaining about. I guess that is the problem with 'short' articles.

The Alto deserves a place in PC history but it was not a consumer-grade PC nor did it drive the adoption of the GUI.

joshv wrote:

It would not be what it is today without massive investment by private industry.

Almost every major innovation that has revolutionized society is a result of public/private cooperation. The Internet today is a result of just that. However the article minimizes the fact that early development of the modern Internet was shouldered by US and European governments.

Let's imagine an alternate reality where the government never saw networked computers as a beneficial technology, so directed no money or energy toward its development.

Do you think network computers, and something like the internet would still have been developed, or not?

A massive display of historical, technical, and political ignorance in service of a disturbingly zealous and popular partisan message? In my Wall Street Journal editorials page? Next you'll be telling me that Fox News has a similarly fact-averse slant that colors everything about their content!

But..but.. L. Gordon Crovitz got all his facts from the interwebz so they must all be true cause you can't publish anything on the interwebz that isn't true. I should know this cause I read it on the interwebz saying such, thus, ipto factso, it's true.

Ethernet was designed primarily as a local networking technology to connect computers in a home or office.

@ Author: If I understand correctly Ethernet was developed in the '70s and commercialized in 1980 (per Wiki). Now my questions are this: When you say "primarily" designed for a purpose, does this disclude the purpose the critiqued author mentions? Because if so to counter a statement with a "majority" use would seem, odd. But what caught my eye is your statement that, in the 70s, Ethernet was developed to connect home computers. Office I see (be it academic, government, or private) but I have a hard time believing, due to the miniscule install base in the 70s, that Ethernet was "designed primarily" for home and office use. "Home" seems like a completely corner case and not the primary purpose for the design development--it is a purpose that the design could accomodate AND later in the industries development found a nice home. That may be a nit pick but what do you expect from an article whose purpose is to complain about the accuracy of another author? In fact it seems to be the exact sort of error the article itself is complaining about. I guess that is the problem with 'short' articles.

I just mean that ethernet was a LAN technology. I don't know whether Taylor or Metcalfe anticipated that it would eventually be used in homes.

Let's imagine an alternate reality where the government never saw networked computers as a beneficial technology, so directed no money or energy toward its development.

Do you think network computers, and something like the internet would still have been developed, or not?

I'm sorry, I don't do spurious hypothetical questions that serve only as a platform for you to make some kind of questionable point. I could just as easily counter with "Let's imagine an alternate reality where private industries never saw computers as a viable means of making a profit".

Except the Xerox Alto epitomizes that very statement. Which is why Apple is almost always, erroneously, credited with developing the GUI.

Let's imagine an alternate reality where the government never saw networked computers as a beneficial technology, so directed no money or energy toward its development.

Do you think network computers, and something like the internet would still have been developed, or not?

We'd still have got things like AOL, Compuserve, Facebook, Twitter... just without the compatibility and common ground the Internet provides worldwide. We would have got something with much less reach, even more corporate control and even less privacy.

Bob Metcalfe(co-inventor of Ethernet at PARC and founder of 3COM) got short changed in this story. He is an interesting and brilliant guy with significant contributions to computing. He is also one of my favorite people for the all time worst predictions in computing(Internet collapse, death of Linux/OpenSource with W2K etc).

He was never afraid to put a stake in the ground though, I give him that.

I also really liked reading his op-eds in the big huge printed version of InfoWorld all of us in the industry used to get in the mail every month back before the internet really replaced printed magazines.

The Wall Street Journal has earned a reputation for producing in-depth and meticulously fact-checked news coverage. Unfortunately, it doesn't always apply that same high standard of quality to their editorial page.

Yeah, the editorial section has been a cesspool of FoxNews-like pundits with no fact-checking ability for decades. The idea that they would totally get internet history wrong just to make a point is not the least bit shocking to me.

The Wall Street Journal has earned a reputation for producing in-depth and meticulously fact-checked news coverage. Unfortunately, it doesn't always apply that same high standard of quality to their editorial page.

The editorial page is political and this is a political article. Obama said the internet was created by government research and this article is trying to rewrite history for political reasons. This becomes clear at the end where Crovitz minimizes government research and credits business innovation.

Quote:

It's important to understand the history of the Internet because it's too often wrongly cited to justify big government... building great technology businesses requires both innovation and the skills to bring innovations to market...Those who do—not the government—deserve the credit for making it happen.

The crucial stages in developing the Internet protocols were all a combination of government (mostly DARPA in the US), university researchers (notably at Stanford, USC-ISI, UCLA, and MIT), and some corporate research organizations (notably BBN, where I was at the time, DEC, and SRI). There were also two major European collaborators that I recall from the early days, UCL in the UK, and NDRE in Norway. Sorry if I left anyone out, it's been more than 30 years now....

Ethernet was a crucial infrastructure technology, but didn't scale well outside the local environment until IP over Ethernet came into vogue, which I'd credit primarily to Sun. After the earliest days of the Internet, when mainframes and minicomputers dominated (mostly DEC PDP-10s, DEC 20s, and PDP-11s and later VAXes), the Sun workstation was the next big step towards today's Internet. Sun popularized Ethernet as the local network of choice, and TCP/IP as the standard protocol suite (does anyone remember GOSIP any more?).

The Internet core did evolve a lot after the DARPA days; and one major protocol (BGP) continued to evolve for a while. But most of the key software technologies were created by the DARPA program. Router technology has evolved a lot since then, primarily in the private sector, and most notably at Cisco.

Unfortunately, this sort of misinformation is growing as the US Presidential election really gears up, as certain parts of the Republican party continue to use "you don't need government help to be successful" as a major talking point.

Ignoring the interstate system, trade laws, air travel, rail travel, etc... and of course, misstating the origins of the internet.

Conveniently, all sides spread their lies, so it's best to just ignore them all and form your own opinion. Fortunately, this piece was labeled as an opinion piece, so you knew right up front. The truly offensive ones are the ones where they pretend that they're reporting news or facts.

The only way to win tug of war is to pull harder, that is, get farther from the center. To expect either side to not do this is mere fantasy. They're not governing the country, they're trying to beat each other at tug of war, either for purposes of ego or money.

Bob Metcalfe(co-inventor of Ethernet at PARC and founder of 3COM) got short changed in this story. He is an interesting and brilliant guy with significant contributions to computing. He is also one of my favorite people for the all time worst predictions in computing(Internet collapse, death of Linux/OpenSource with W2K etc).

Metcalfe is awesome and your post reminded me of something: where did Robert Metcalfe develop and revise the early Ethernet model that the article lauds accolades on? Why, good heavens, the publicly owned ALOHAnet.

Yeah there's only two ways to look at it. Either the government is solely responsible for this incredible resource, or private industry only managed to bestow this genius upon us despite incompetent government intrusion.

Yep, nuanced and detailed stories with better-than-marginal accuracy like this one are nothing but childish wacko nonsense... People who read actual histories of these things simply don't understand:

Most ludicrous about this bit of loopy propaganda I've linked is the implication that somehow the dedicated research and applications of enthusiasts and academics drew upon the support of federal agencies and other non-profit organizations to develop technologies and implement ideas that didn't have obvious commercial applications for many, many decades.

Yep, it really only ever comes down to two points of view, and for one to be correct at all, the other must be completely false.

"The Wall Street Journal has earned a reputation for producing in-depth and meticulously fact-checked news coverage. Unfortunately, it doesn't always apply that same high standard of quality to their editorial page."

The point still stands. The Internet was a collegiate backwater until it was privatized and commercialized, a step that many in academia and government resisted tooth and nail.

It would not be what it is today without massive investment by private industry.

The point still stands. The Internet was a collegiate backwater until it was privatized and commercialized, a step that many in academia and government resisted tooth and nail.

No, it doesn't. The internet was a huge, wildly disruptive and successful technology that exploded while private industry was left flat-footed trying to catch up. Microsoft, Apple, all the big tech players... none of them saw it coming and it took them years to get their heads around it.

Quote:

It would not be what it is today without massive investment by private industry.

Unfortunately true. Since the day of Netscape's IPO, when the private sector started catching up with this particular golden egg-laying goose, they've been aiming knives at it. It's been nothing but attempts to carve it up into private fiefdoms and proprietary standards. The private sector's ideal of the world wide web is still something like a bigger version of Compuserve.

The Wall Street Journal has earned a reputation for producing in-depth and meticulously fact-checked news coverage. Unfortunately, it doesn't always apply that same high standard of quality to their editorial page.

This is exactly right, and something every marginally informed WSJ reader knows. Their news coverage is often better and more objective than the New York Times, but all the opinion section is only good for one thing - as kindling on a cold night.

This isn't particularly surprising. Having followed the WSJ for a few years, I can say it is good at reporting on finance, but when it comes to outside areas that they try to cover, the same quality simply isn't there.

hobgoblin wrote:

Being WSJ, i am surprised they did not try to claim everything was done by Apple.

Yeah, their technology news alerts seem to have an obsession with Apple... Though most of those alerts, Apple or not, are non-events.

The Alto deserves a place in PC history but it was not a consumer-grade PC nor did it drive the adoption of the GUI.

joshv wrote:

It would not be what it is today without massive investment by private industry.

Almost every major innovation that has revolutionized society is a result of public/private cooperation. The Internet today is a result of just that. However the article minimizes the fact that early development of the modern Internet was shouldered by US and European governments.

Let's imagine an alternate reality where the government never saw networked computers as a beneficial technology, so directed no money or energy toward its development.

Do you think network computers, and something like the internet would still have been developed, or not?

Not really, the private sector was clearly headed down the prodigy/compuserve path

If it had been entirely left up to private enterprise, there would not be a singular "internet". Instead there would be a heap of balkanized pay services with limited interconnectivity. Think back to the pre-internet consumer networks: AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy, etc. Each had its own proprietary interface application. Typically you had to pay extra to send messages from one service to another, if at all.

"The Wall Street Journal has earned a reputation for producing in-depth and meticulously fact-checked news coverage. Unfortunately, it doesn't always apply that same high standard of quality to their editorial page."

The point still stands. The Internet was a collegiate backwater until it was privatized and commercialized, a step that many in academia and government resisted tooth and nail.

It would not be what it is today without massive investment by private industry.

Evidence?

History of telecommunications? Early developments funded through government research deserve proper credit. Still, without billions of dollars in investment from the private industry I would not be sitting here in my office, typing up this reply.

Timothy B. Lee / Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times.